MASTERS HISTORY
HIDEKI Matsuyama became the first Japanese man to win a major golf championship on Monday, holding his nerve down the stretch to capture the 85th Masters after a dramatic final round.
Carrying the hopes of a nation on his shoulders, Matsuyama calmly grinded out clutch pars and struck for crucial birdies in a pressure-packed march at Augusta National, hanging on over the final holes for a historic one-stroke victory.
Matsuyama took the green jacket symbolic of Masters supremacy, a top prize of $2.7m and a place for the ages in Japanese sports history.
“I’m really happy,” he said through a translator. “Hopefully I’ll be a pioneer in this and many other Japanese will follow. I’m happy to open the floodgate and many more will follow me.
“Maybe a lot of younger golfers thought, ‘That’s an impossibility’, but with me doing it they will realise it is possible and if they set their minds to it they can do it.”
After seeing his sevenstroke lead with seven holes remaining shaved to two shots with three to go, Matsuyama watched Xander Schauffele find water off the 16th tee on the way to a triple-bogey disaster.
“I felt like I gave him a little bit of a run and made a little bit of excitement for the tournament until I met a watery grave there,” Schauffele said. “I’ll be able to sleep tonight. It might be hard but I’ll be OK.”
Matsuyama settled for bogey but closed with par at 17 and a bogey at 18 to fire a oneover-par 73 and finish 72 holes on 10-under 278.
“My nerves really didn’t start on the second nine,” Matsuyama said. “It was from the start today to the very last putt.”
American Will Zalatoris was second in his Masters debut on 279 after a closing 70 with US three-time major winner Jordan Spieth and American Schauffele sharing third on 281.
Matsuyama became only the second Asian man to win a major title after South Korea’s Yang Yong-eun at the 2009 PGA Championship.
Matsuyama, ranked 25th, hadn’t won since the 2017 WGC Akron tournament, but 87 starts later, he matched the victory from his only other 54hole outright PGA lead, at the 2016 WGC Shanghai tournament.
Matsuyama’s thoughts were on his family back home in Japan.
“I was thinking about them all the way around today,” he said. “I was playing it for them.”